The Turnstile
Jimmy the Jam Franklin jumped the turnstile. It wasn’t something he did every day. It was out of character. He felt remorse— Jimmy did try his metro-card at different turnstiles before exasperation and panic got the better of him.
Jimmy had an interview for a job at an Ice-cream store. They’d never hire him if they knew he jumped a turnstile. He hated to lie or conceal partial truths. Little things like that tortured his good-natured soul. He was always rethinking the previous blunder. Never paying enough attention to the moment, he was, as a result always in a jam.
****
Madison went through the emergency exit. The siren, she felt, blessedly did not sound. She was not in that much of a hurry. No hurry to get to that boring job. Her boring job seemed like a waste of her newly minted college diploma. Madison was too smart, too clever, too goodlooking to waste her time studying. So she got a mediocre GPA from a mediocre school.
Madison was always in a hurry, even when she wasn’t. Everything bored her. You could easily imagine her filing her nails during lovemaking- or posting random thoughts on Facebook.
She just didn’t want to wait on line. If the alarm sounded, as it sometimes did, she’d let out a semi-scream, a stream of indignation: profanity bemoaning her being the victim of the noise, the subway, the system. Why did stuff always have to happen to her? Did the gods in one of her past lives curse her karma? Tarot cards sometimes suggested that was the root cause. Her astrologer had been arrested for bilking thousands of dollars out of tourists - and convincing them to eagerly hand over their gaudy jewelry. She was lost at sea without an astrologer.
****
Simon wasn’t in a hurry at all. He was on vacation from New Zealand where he owned a sheep farm. Although he liked quiet and meditated daily, the hustle and bustle of New York subways was a welcome novelty.
*****
Two stations away there was a track fire. No one was hurt. In fact these minor fires were a daily if not hourly occurrence.
****
Suzy wasn’t her real name. She had earned a Ph. D. in neuropsychology in Bangalore. She had started using “Suzy” when she was a student working part-time for an outsourced Taiwanese telemarketing firm. Her mandarin and cantonese were very good. Here the only job her limited English - and slightly limited imagination- got her was token clerk.
****
Just then he heard an explosion. Jimmy couldn’t make it to the interview. “Hell,” he thought: “I cant even make it to the exit. The exit no longer existed. That’s what they thought. It was blocked by a pile of rubble. It was a miracle no one was using the stairs when the blast occurred.
Madison was thrown into Jimmy’s arms, literally. She semi-screamed some profanities. He was too shocked by the blast and by the blast of her verbal venom to respond.
Simon and Suzy were becoming acquainted, rapidly, trying to figure out what had happened. He was not sheepish about getting the lay of the land then setting things aright.
The consensus underground was terrorism. They expected another blast. No one had been seriously injured in the first blast. No second blast came, though it was hours before they were excavated. The dark lasted only a
minute. It was just a utility line break, a minor blast. Power restored, a few feathers ruffled, a few new friends made in the common suffering, minor pickpocketing, repairs started that night. Life went on.
Jimmy texted the manger of the ice cream shop. The guy was understanding, said “Come right over.” Jimmy got the job.
A few months later Jim was promoted to manager after the other guy went back to school.
Just so happened, that hot July day, two weeks after his promotion that Madison broke her heel outside the Ice cream parlor. She had a fit, cursing the day fishnet stockings were invented. Jim half recognized her, went out to where Madison was nursing her sore ankle. Jim offered assistance. At first she barked at him for not maintaining the sidewalk. His patiently deciding not to buy into her bitterness caused her to soften, relax and accept a double chocolate, coffee-mocha milkshake. She didn’t need to call 911 but gratefully accepted an ice pack. She let him massage her ankle. She kind of recognized him too.
Simon didn’t miss the sheep or his farm. He sold them to stay with the hustle and bustle of New York and especially to stay with Suzy who was teaching him Hindi, Mandarin and Cantonese. He taught her English. They were both surprised he could process learning three languages at the same time. Simon understood this as his having been intellectually- as well as socially starved.
Suzy’s imagination has taken on new life. She planned to get certified to work at an American university. Simon planned to retire. She was twenty years his junior and he wasn’t sure if this would work romantically - in the long run. They were both divorced. Both had grown children. Both were grandparents. Who knows? They enjoyed each other’s company. What surprised them even more was Simon’s interest, really fascination with neurophysiology and even more surprising: Suzy’s interest in sheep farming.
One hot July day a little over a year after Madison broke her heel and wrecked her new stockings, Suzy and Simon were taking a stroll on Mott Street near a Hagen-Daz. They stopped in for matching mint chip milkshakes. Madison was working the counter while Jim pored over expansion plans. It had been six months since he bought the store and had opened an adjoining restaurant.
Jim and Madison alone in the store were discussing the relative merits of taking out a loan vs asking friends and family to invest. On entering, Simon said to Suzy, “Looks like we’ve found our investment opportunity.” Simon was more impulsive than a calculating businessman. Nonetheless he had done well for himself and his extended family.
They called their new chain of fabulously successful ice-cream parlor restaurants: “The Turnstile.”